The employees of J.D. Barrett and Co. Fine Jewelry realized quickly that they were in for an interesting afternoon—first when Britney Spears’ “Toxic” began blasting over the store’s speakers at a higher volume than they’d ever achieved before, second when every light went out and came back on in a riot of different colors, and finally when Latchkey burst in from the secure backroom with a flourish and began absolutely throwing ass.
Between the bass-boosted music, the flashing lights, the vigorously gyrating supervillain, and the incapacitated security guards, there wasn’t much anyone could do but take cover, maybe pull out their phones, and watch as the store was thoroughly and enthusiastically robbed.
It was one of his more impressive displays, if Latch did say so himself. Every step, every punch and kick through the glass display cases, every motion of grabbing jewelry and shoving it into his duffel bag, was perfectly in time. One of the customers hiding nearby was bobbing her head to the music. He threw in a shoulder shimmy when he saw her staring, and was rewarded when she laughed and nearly dropped her phone.
It would have been a perfectly clean performance—and getaway—if a hero hadn’t chosen that moment to shatter the entire storefront.
Nothing threw off his rhythm quite like roughly three hundred square feet of glass shards blowing into the store mid-robbery. Latch managed to pirouette awkwardly behind a kiosk before the flying glass could shred him. Some of the screams from the sheltering customers and staff sounded distinctly pained.
Behind his mask, Latch shot a glare at the hero stepping through the ruined storefront. This wasn’t one of the usual crowd. Latch’s opponents were small-timers—with homemade body armor, unpolished moves, and the thin, hungry look of someone working two or three thankless jobs. This one was well-fed and dressed in scale armor buffed and polished to a shine, with the calm, practiced stance of a trained fighter.
This was what he got for going after a high-end jewelry store—heroes with money.
The armored hero pointed at the kiosk and mimed firing a gun. Every part made of glass shattered instantly, and in the seconds that followed, the hero reached it, touched it, and shattered the rest.
Latch tsked disapprovingly. “You break it, you buy it.” He ducked the first punch, whirling directly behind the hero before he could throw another. “Hm! Sloppy!” Another, and another, each blow closer than the last. “Whoops! Oops! Uh-oh! Oops! Wuh-oh! Oh no! Oops!”
“What the fuck are you doing?!” the hero demanded. “Are you too much of a pussy to fight?”
“Toxic” had ended; the next on the playlist was “Take It Off” by Ke$ha. “Who’s fighting?” he asked, bumping his hips from side to side. “I’m dancing. It’s good exercise. Keeps you young.”
He pivoted out of the way of another punch, and the hero’s hand came in contact with the display case that ran most of the length of the room. The glass panels exploded outward; the people sheltering behind it screamed.
Okay, showtime over. This officially wasn’t fun anymore. Latch cut the music, swung the duffel over his shoulder, and dashed out through the open storefront.
Also sloppy, giving him such a wide escape route. Rookie move.
The hero gave chase, leading to a literal trail of destruction as every missed grab ended in more property damage. Whatever his mutation was, it shattered everything—glass, concrete, wood, brick, stone—and beyond the jewelry store was a crowded shopping district. Latch didn’t want to think about what it might do to a person.
He nearly ducked down a side street to lead the hero away from the crowds on Main, before a series of familiar pops rang out, and three purple paintballs splattered into the wall inches from his head. Latch froze in alarm, just long enough to notice the school group of three dozen kids he’d nearly lured the hero right into.
The angle of the projectiles drew Latch’s eye to a nearby fire escape, where a purple and black figure stood with an airgun propped on one shoulder. He’d shot to miss; Hazard only ever missed on purpose.
Instinctively Latch braced for a sonic scream, but it never came. Howler wasn’t with her partner today, which made sense, all things considered. At least they were being responsible.
Luckily, the arrival of another hero had thrown off the newbie enough to make him stop throwing his mutation around willy-nilly, so Latch took the opportunity to fling the duffel bag—stuffed full and weighted down with five display cases’ worth of jewelry—straight into his face. By the time he recovered, Latch had already dashed past the kids, around several corners, and out of sight. Anyone who checked security cameras afterward would find them mysteriously wiped.
Latch made it to one of his camera blind spots, changed into street clothes, and ducked smoothly back into the hustle and bustle of the city. Not a bad haul today. It would’ve been nice to be able to pawn some of that jewelry, but that came with its own risks. The public would chalk this up to a win for Hazard and whats-his-face, and no one would notice the real heist until J.D. Barrett and Co. did their books for the day, and someone realized that the “empty” USB in the manager’s computer wasn’t supposed to be there.
Anthony dropped his Latchkey gear back at home, did some cooldown stretches, changed out of his sports bra and into a binder, and waited a half hour before going to pick up Jonah.
Pearl answered the door, looking slightly harried, and for a moment Anthony thought he hadn’t waited long enough. Then Joel ducked in from another room, all smiles as he ushered Anthony’s nine-year-old out of the kitchen with a tupperware full of brownies.
“Thanks again,” Anthony said, counting twenties into Pearl’s hand. “And sorry for the short notice. Everything go okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Pearl said gruffly. “We kind of went on a baking frenzy, hope that’s okay. We made sure Jonah didn’t eat too much.”
“I had two,” Jonah announced.
“He had four,” said Pearl. “It was like trying to wrestle a cat away from a loaf of bread.”
“Oh, and just so you know, I did step out for a bit,” Joel said sheepishly. “Not too long! I had a group project thing for class, and today was the only day everyone could make it.”
“Completely okay,” Anthony assured him. “I was the one who sprang this on you.” It wasn’t every day a jewelry store’s entire security system got stalled by a buggy software update. “Thanks again, really—you guys are lifesavers.”
Jonah trotted after him, not speaking until they were fully out of the apartment complex. “Did you punch Joel?” he asked.
“Nope,” Anthony replied. “Never got close to him. He almost nailed me in the face with a paintball, though.”
“He only misses when he means to.”
“I know, kiddo.” Anthony paused. “Why did you ask if I punched him?”
“He was limping when he got back. He tried to hide it.”
“Hm.” The life of a superhero was a dangerous one, for a lot of reasons. Hazard’s big break had been taking down a trafficking ring, and just last month he and Howler had gotten a beat cop publicly shamed and fired. Those two had both the criminals and the cops after them, and none of the backing that people like Newbie clearly had.
And Newbie had looked pretty unhappy when Anthony left them.
“I’ll look into it,” he offered. “I only wiped the security cams that saw my getaway.”
They were just a couple of kids trying to save the world and go to college. Someone had to look out for them.
***
A discreet, untraceable email dropped directly into Joel’s inbox did the trick.
There were no intercom systems to play with in the meet-up spot that Anthony picked, but that was alright. This was a little too serious for theatrics.
He covered their arrival carefully, making sure no cameras would see them come in or out. Abandoned warehouses were a little passe as secret meeting spots went, but this one made a fantastic Faraday cage.
Howler was with him this time, in dark red with gold accents. “What’s this about?” she snapped when Anthony stepped into view. The top half of her face was entirely hidden behind reflective ski goggles, but the cagelike muzzle of her mask did nothing to hide her bared teeth.
Hazard shifted close to her side, a light touch to her elbow settling her slightly. “How’d you get my email address?” he asked.
“I asked nicely,” Anthony replied.
Howler tensed. “Asked who?”
“The server,” Anthony said. “And this is about the new friend we made today.” He couldn’t see Hazard’s face behind the tinted motorcycle helmet, but he heard the kid grimace.
“He means Fracture,” Hazard explained.
“Ugh, what about him.”
Anthony grinned. “Worked with him before?”
“What’s it to you?” Howler shot back, though with less venom than before. “He’s some new shithead that cares more about being the big man on the street than helping.”
“Best I can tell, his mutation lets him lower the breaking strength of anything solid just by touching it,” Hazard explained. “Which is a great power for breaking down doors and getting out of handcuffs and stuff, I just wish he’d stop using it so close to people’s bones.”
Howler’s lip curled. “You’re lucky he didn’t use it when he punched you in the dick.”
“It wasn’t my—”
“Do you see him a lot?” Anthony asked.
“He’s been trying to join up with us,” said Hazard. “Before he hit me last time, Howler thought he was a fanboy, but I keep saying if it walks like a cop and quacks like a cop—”
“A cop wouldn’t be caught dead in costume,” Howler argued.
“Well, one of you is right.” Anthony held up the manila folder he’d brought. “I don’t usually do this, but something didn’t sit right, so I made an exception.”
Howler took the folder and flipped through it. She slowed after the first two blown-up photographs, and angled it so that Hazard could see. For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Then Hazard elbowed his partner. “Told you he was a cop,” he muttered.
“Why’d he have to be that cop?” Howler snarled under her breath.
“I don’t know what his goal is, but if he’s been trying to get close, I’d be careful,” Anthony advised. “I doubt he wants to thank you for getting him fired.”
“What’s your angle?” Howler asked. “Why give us this? What do you want for it?”
“Look the other way on my next robbery rave?”
“Not a chance,” Howler said flatly.
Anthony shrugged, grinning. “Worth a shot. You two sure you’re okay?”
“Honestly, I’m not even surprised,” Hazard admitted. “I’ve been waiting for Stanton to make a move ever since he got kicked off the force. That’s how you know you’ve made it big as a superhero, you know? When everyone’s trying to kill you.”
Howler snorted. “Dude, somebody put a hit out on me before I even had superpowers. Get in line.” Hazard winced visibly. “I still don’t know how I survived that.”
“Well, you guys can always hop over to this side if things get too dicey,” Anthony offered. “Come on in, the water’s great.”
“Thanks,” Howler said dryly.
“I’m serious. It’s what I did when I got burned at my old job. Now I’m my own boss, I make my own hours, my morale’s never been higher—”
“Somehow I don’t think turning to a life of crime would make the police come after us less,” said Hazard.
“See, you’d think that,” Anthony said cheerfully. “I tried to do normal crime when I was starting out, and they came after me pretty hard. But the second I put on a costume and came up with a fun gimmick, suddenly the cops are pulling punches and letting me do my thing.”
He couldn’t see Howler’s eyes, but he assumed by the angle of her face that she was staring at him. “Why?”
“Best guess, I’m a distraction from the city’s bigger problems. I’m fun to watch and easy to deal with, or at least it’s easy to make it look like they’re dealing with me. It’s like when the police department tweets about shutting down unlicensed fruit carts just to prove they’re doing something. Meanwhile I get enough money out of corporate bank accounts to support a wife and dog and two-point-five kids, and the public gets a little entertainment. I’m basically a street performer with extra steps.”
“Sounds fun,” Howler said.
“We’ll keep that in mind.” Hazard’s voice cracked with held-back laughter.
“You do that. Watch out for cops in spandex, and don’t say I never did anything for you.”
He vanished back into the shadows, with Howler’s voice ringing out behind him. “This is literally the only thing you’ve ever done for us!”
***
To the public, Latchkey was known for being spontaneous and chaotic. It took a lot of prep and planning to keep it that way.
It was an open secret that the Brittany Barrera Foundation funneled almost all of its donations straight into the C-suite’s pockets, so he had no qualms about hitting their charity gala next. That meant leaving Jonah with Joel and Pearl for the afternoon while he scoped out the venue.
He was doing a casual run-through of his third possible escape route when, elsewhere in the city, his son pressed the panic button.
Anthony was outside in a flash, hotel staff flying out of the way without thinking to question a man who clearly knew where he was going.
The car started the moment Anthony touched the door handle—he hadn’t used his key fob since his mutation—and his phone blinked on with a map of the city, bearing one icon at the spot where Jonah had pressed the button, and another indicating Jonah’s tracking device. With one eye on the screen and the other on the road, Anthony drove across the city with carefully forced calm. He didn’t speed, and changing stoplights had been one of the first things he learned to do, so no need to run any reds. It wouldn’t do to get stopped over a traffic violation.
The tracker led him past Main Street, which he carefully maneuvered around. There was a street festival going on today, and Pearl had sent him a text letting him know they were taking Jonah out for the afternoon. He passed by the spot where Jonah had called for help, and found nothing.
Eventually, the tracker took him three miles north, to a stripped-down building that had once been a big box store, and now never managed to be anything more than a sporadic Spirit Halloween. There was a single unmarked van outside. No light shone within.
Anthony parked two blocks over and two blocks down, and grabbed his spare gear from the trunk.
The front door stopped him. It was a normal door with normal locks, nothing mechanical enough for him to manipulate. But as he probed around the sides and back of the building, he struck gold. One of the back doors had a swipe lock for a card or badge, long deactivated. At his touch, it powered back on. The door unlocked with a soft click, and Anthony slipped inside.
No musical entrance this time. If there were guns trained on the kids, it wouldn’t do to startle them.
As he made his way through the back rooms, past empty manager’s offices and a staff breakroom, distant voices gradually reached him. He encountered no guards; either he was dealing with amateurs, or whoever had done this didn’t consider two teens and a fourth-grader worth the effort.
Eventually he reached the exit out into the showroom floor—another keycard lock—and paused, listening.
“—don’t know what you’re talking about, we were just walking in the street and you almost killed my friend—”
Hazard—Joel’s voice was cut off by the sound of a blow landing. Anthony unlocked the door with a tap, and carefully inched it open. The shop floor was stripped bare, with not even the skeletons of aisles to block his view. He counted six gunmen and two more in charge. One of them was the disgraced former Officer Don Stanton, still in the scale mail but without the mask. And the other—
Anthony went cold. Not in the frightened way that would freeze him to the spot, but in calm, almost soothing certainty. All extraneous pieces fell into place.
Joel was the only one with his wits about him. Pearl was leaning against his side, shoulders heaving as if she struggled to breathe. Jonah was tucked between and behind them, shielded from harm by their unprotected bodies.
Well. Not so unprotected, now.
“You know what your problem is, Durante?” Stanton was saying, looming over both of them. “You and all the rest of the freaks? You catch a fancy mutation, put on a mask, get mom to sew you a costume, and you think that makes you special. You think it makes you tough. You forget who’s really in charge.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
Stanton drove a fist into his ribs, silencing him. “I’m just saying, don’t blame me for what happens next. Maybe blame your daddy. Maybe if he beat your ass a little harder, you would’ve grown up humble.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Pearl snarled. Stanton laughed.
“You done?” the other man in charge said dryly. “I’d like to wrap this up.”
“Keep your pants on, Warwick, I’ve waited months for this.”
“And I’ve waited years—”
“I’m sure you have,” Anthony said brightly.
Ten faces whipped around to stare at him. Jonah pressed his forehead to Joel’s side, and smiled.
“Wait, is that Latchkey?” one of the gunmen piped up. Laughter rippled through the rest.
“Do a little dance, Latch!”
“Play some Gaga!”
Warwick lifted his chin, smirking in the low light of the abandoned store. “Walk away, Latchkey,” he said. “Only two people have to die today.” His eyes flickered to Jonah. “Well. Three. Too bad about the kid.”
“Always kids with you,” Anthony said. “Always those kids. You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Warwick.”
Warwick blinked. For a split second, surprise and recognition flickered across his face. “Anthon—?” he managed to say, before a bullet ripped through his neck.
Six more shots, and the gunmen crumpled without a sound. Stanton braced himself to charge, before another took out his kneecap, and he fell to the floor with a howl of pain.
“What the fuck,” he hissed, eyes rolling with shock as he stared up into Anthony’s face.
“Did you tell anyone?” Anthony asked.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Anthony dealt with the remaining kneecap. “Did you tell anyone?”
Stanton was slow on the uptake, but he seemed to get it all the same. “I—no! No, I didn’t, Warwick approached me, I didn’t—I won’t tell anyone!”
“I know,” Anthony replied.
The final shot echoed in the emptiness, fading into the almost-silence between Pearl’s shallow, wheezing breaths.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Joel drew back, pulling Pearl with him and pressing Jonah further behind them both.
Anthony sighed. “I really am sorry. Thought I got them all before.”
“You—” Joel’s eyes darted from side to side, from Anthony’s mask to the gun in his hand to the bodies on the floor, and back to Anthony. “You were the hitman they hired to—why?”
“Why what?” Anthony said gently.
“You almost killed me,” Pearl wheezed through clenched teeth.
“That was the job.”
“Then why didn’t you finish it?” Joel asked. “What happened?”
“The Sacramento Event, for one,” Anthony replied. “The one that made Howler.” Pearl’s eyes narrowed. “It made me, too.”
“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t kill me,” Pearl shot back.
“I didn’t take jobs killing people with mutations. Mutants, Mutates, and kids—those were my rules. Once you mutated, you were safe from me.” Anthony grinned. “Good thing, too. I’d have killed one of my kid’s favorite babysitters.”
Pearl choked on the air she was breathing, wincing in pain. Joel’s mouth fell open. Behind them, Jonah heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“The cop smashed my button, Dad.”
Behind his mask, Anthony grinned. “That’s okay, kiddo, we can get you a new one.”
“Whatthefuck,” Pearl wheezed again.
“I’ll ask again,” Anthony said. “Are you okay?”
“Sh-she, uh.” Joel glanced at his partner as if for help.
“Fucker smashed some of my ribs,” Pearl spat. “Stopped me from… you know. Yelling.”
“Hospital, then,” said Anthony. “You two take Jonah—”
“I’m fine,” Jonah protested, without much conviction.
“—I’ll clean up here,” Anthony finished. “Won’t be long.”
Joel hesitated. “W-what are you gonna do with them?”
“Does it matter?”
Joel’s mouth tightened. The knuckles on the hand holding Jonah’s shoulder went white.
“No,” Pearl answered for both of them.
“W-wait,” Joel spoke up, stopping her before she could turn to go. His eyes were fixed on Anthony’s face, searching. “You said you got burned at your old job?”
Anthony turned Warwick’s body over with his foot. “That’s the trouble with catching a mutation in that line of work—people think you’re too dangerous if you’re not under somebody’s heel. So when I turned down the job… well. He didn’t like being told no. Not by a guy that could talk to machines.”
“But you’re your own boss now?”
Anthony snapped his fingers, and the store intercom crackled to life.
“—ut I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door…”
“Heh,” Pearl wheezed. “My mom loves this one.”
Once they were gone, Anthony rolled his shoulders and got to work.
This had always been his least favorite part of his old job. Stanton better have been telling the truth—he was not getting back into this habit.
